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A Minnesota hiker was found deceased in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains nearly a month after he sent a final text message to his wife and was not heard from again, authorities said Thursday.
The body of Grant Gardner, 38, was found underneath a ledge near the summit of the 13,000-foot Cloud Peak by a professional climbing team from North Carolina, the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
“While it’s not the outcome we hoped for, we are hopeful this will provide much needed peace and closure to the family,” the sheriff’s office said.
Gardner went missing on July 29 in the Cloud Peak Wilderness, where he had planned a three-day hike through the Misty Moon Lake area before eventually summiting Cloud Peak.
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Phone records showed Gardner’s last known contact was a message to his wife on that day, “letting her know he’d made it to the summit,” the sheriff’s office has said. Authorities said that the text indicated “the climb was more taxing than he expected and he was tired.”
In the weeks that followed, the sheriff’s office, search and rescue teams and volunteers tirelessly combed the wilderness for signs of Gardner without success.
On Tuesday, the professional climbing team had summited Cloud Peak and began to descend on the northern route of the peak when they made a high-altitude camp and noticed “a slight reflection a few hundred feet above them underneath a ledge,” the sheriff’s office said.
The climbers believed it was a backpack and notified the sheriff’s office via satellite. They agreed to postpone their plans and wait for rescuers to arrive.
When the rescuers arrived at daylight, they found Gardner’s remains near the backpack, the sheriff’s office said, adding that his clothing “very closely” matched the terrain where he was climbing and was difficult to notice.
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Gardner’s body was recovered from the mountain and was brought home to his family.
The 38-year-old is a father of two children, ages 13 and 11, Cowboy State Daily reported. His wife, Lauren, previously told the outlet that her husband had been hiking for over a decade and like to go solo.
“It’s all definitely surreal,” she told the outlet as the search was still ongoing. “And I’m in shock, I think, and trying to stay strong for the kids. This has never happened in all the years he’s gone out. He knows what he’s doing and has the skills. I’m just hoping right now.”
The sheriff’s office noted that the case was given to the Big Horn County Coroner’s Office to determine time, manner and cause of death as is routine.
“Nothing should be read into this transition,” the sheriff’s office said. “We believe Gardner succumbed to a tragic accident as we all have surmised.”
The sheriff’s office also thanked the professional climbing team for their help, saying they were in the right place at the right time.
“Special thanks to a spectacular professional group of technical climbers who were in exactly the right spot, at the right moment, with the right light, to notice a small piece of fabric on a pack that was otherwise undetectable, for selflessly aborting their plans and working with SAR Teams to find Gardner, providing closure to his family,” it said.
Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report.
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